JONATHAN CHAIT JULY 27, 2010
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Jonathan Bernstein notes a historical precursor to the current liberal drive to scale back the filibuster:
In 1958, Democrats won a huge landslide in the last midterm with Eisenhower as president. Democrats had maintained majorities in Congress since 1955, but the 1958 elections gave liberal Democrats their first solid majorities in twenty years. Then in 1960, John Kennedy was elected and liberals controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House...
...and nothing happened. Well, not quite nothing, but most of the liberal agenda was stopped by rules that empowered conservatives in the House of Representatives. Yup, the House, not (primarily) the Senate.
And so the first Congress with JFK in the White House was relatively unproductive, and Democrats didn't do especially well in the 1962 midterms. Meanwhile, liberals inside and outside of Congress applied major pressure for reform, and in fact during those years, liberals in the House enacted major reforms. So Democrats started passing major legislation including the Civil Rights Act, and then when Democrats won another landslide in 1964, Congress was ready to enact the preferences of large liberal majorities, and the result was the famous 89th Congress.
As he notes, repeating this scenario would require Democrats to hold the House in 2010 and then with the White House in 2012. That seems optimistic but not impossible.
8 comments
I'd be surprised if the Democrats held the House. Remember the Wehner Fallacy, Jonathan, and then invert it. The parlous state of the economy is going to cost our side heavily.
- liberal reformer
July 27, 2010 at 1:37pm
It didn't hurt that Johnson could frame civil rights legislation as the express wish of a beloved assassinated president and use that fact to cudgel reluctant congressmen and senators. It also helped that Johnson was a phenomenal legislator who knew how to cut deals like no one else and in 1964 and 1965 was operating in an era of economic expansion. None of those variables (hopefully, in the case of assassination) are going to be replicated any time soon.
- propjoe
July 27, 2010 at 1:45pm
And it helped most of all that Lyndon Johnson had huge majorities on the Hill to back him up. At the beginning of the 89th congress on January 3, 1965, the Democrats had a 68-32 majority in the Senate. In the House, the majority favored the Democrats by a 295-140 count. Just imagine what Mr. Barack Obama could do if he had those numbers at his back. And still he signed a health care bill that had to be finessed through the Ben Nelson Senate.
- liberal reformer
July 27, 2010 at 1:56pm
Libref - to amplify your last point, I think Harry Reid may be the first Majority Leader in history, or at least modern history, to break a filibuster on a party-line vote. Most, if not all previous filibusters were on civil rights legislation and were broken with Repub and non-Southern Dems. Not sure what that means, but if LBJ was Master of the Senate, then the much-maligned Harry Reid may deserve similar accolades.
- Geoff G
July 27, 2010 at 2:07pm
I heartily agree, Geoff. Harry Reid is a master parliamentarian. Lyndon Johnson was a master too, but he was like Wilt Chamberlain towering above a sea of short men, before the advent of so many seven-foot-plus centers. All hail Harry Reid!
- liberal reformer
July 27, 2010 at 2:10pm
Harry Reid also gets to deal with a much more ideologically coherent Democratic party, which makes party-line, filibuster-breaking votes possible. Johnson had to deal with pleasing Hubert Humphrey and Richard Russell at the same time. That is an impossible job. He compensated by appealing to a now near-extinct cohort of moderate Republicans. Both men deserve praise, but there is no "Reid Treatment". Johnson got Wallace to ask for federal troops to intervene in Alabama on behalf of activists. Do you think Reid could do the same with Jeff Sessions or Jim De Mint?
- propjoe
July 27, 2010 at 2:39pm
Lyndon Johnson had the benefit of moderate and even liberal Republicans. Yes, Virginia, once upon a time there was such a thing. Everett Dirksen of Illinois aided Johnson in passing legislation. Now what do we have on the starboard side, Susan Cower and Olympia Submissive?
- liberal reformer
July 27, 2010 at 3:21pm
Others here have pointed the distinct structural differences between liberalism in the early 60’s and today. Liberals today are a shadow of what they were then. Today they are a dispirited bunch. Their reactions to the latest shenanigans of Breibart (the Sherod fiasco) show it clearly. Jon Stewart unearthed a video where Breibart clearly states " I WANT TO BE KNOWN IN HISTORY AS BRINGING DOWN THE INSTITUTIONAL LEFT " He's already done a great job demolishing ACORN, getting two Obama appointees fired They do not recognize that they have been in an ideological war, the likes of which has not been seen in the annals of any developed political system. The war has been going on for decades conducted in public through the air waves through radio first; then television. It is well funded (Richard Mellon Scafe, the Croker family and tens of extremist millionaires). It is not racist; it is anti liberal it has a visceral hatred of liberalism and anything remotely progressive; including moderate Republicanism. (Tanenhaus has identified that hatred). It is as ideologically coherent and collectively cohesive (the just say NO campaign in the US Senate) as the old Communist parties of Europe were in the 1930’s. And it exacts discipline on its members through the cowardice of most of American leadership. Remember Michael Steele’s lightning quick reversal on characterizing Limbaugh as an entertainer, or McCain’s morphing into a callow sycophant. “Rush is an entertainer” we hear, he is a buffoon; no he’s not. He’s like Breibart a very smart manipulator of symbols and dedicated to one goal; ideological purity and one party domination. But liberals won’t wake up, even the most ideologically aware refuse to acknowledge the elephant in the room and shy away from confronting what I call the “hate machine”. Most Left of center commentators (Mark Shields) attribute successes of that “hate machine” to the prevailing high unemployment. Clinton had a great economy and that did not stop the guerilla war that eventually neutered him as a liberal. The mainstream media treats this phenomenon as a case of both sides using nasty tactics …it’s not .. it’s only one side that uses such tactics …I’d love for someone to show me when was the last time someone on the left had used outright libel. Obama is like a Gandhi in this war, trying to prevail by being reasonable and passive; except that the other side has succeeded in painting him as a rabid socialist out to remake America into a Social Democracy (which is not that bad; but the equivalent of Communism in the minds of the Right). Instead of using the Breibart’s overreach to help resurrect ACORN; the latter being crucial to electoral outcomes, liberals have mired themselves into discussions about whether this a new racism. Again it’s not racism, it’s about ideology; they just hate or guts whether we're white or black
- rigos4
July 27, 2010 at 10:42pm